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YouTube Loses Major Advertisers Over Offensive Videos (rollingstone.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Rolling Stone: Verizon, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson and other major companies have pulled advertisements from YouTube after learning they were paired with videos promoting extremism, terrorism and other offensive topics, The New York Times reports. Among the other companies involved are pharmaceutical giant GSK, HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland and L'Oreal, amounting to a potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Google-owned company. The boycott began last week after a Times of London investigation spurred many major European companies to pull their ads from YouTube. American companies swiftly followed, even after Google promised Tuesday to work harder to block ads on "hateful, offensive and derogatory" videos. Like AT&T, most companies are only pulling their ads from YouTube and will continue to place ads on Google's search platforms, which remain the biggest source of revenue for Google's parent company, Alphabet. Still, the tech giant offered up a slew of promises to assuage marketers and ensure them that they were fixing the problems on YouTube. Due to the massive number of videos on YouTube -- about 400 hours of video is posted each minute -- the site primarily uses an automated system to place ads. While there are some failsafes in place to keep advertisements from appearing alongside offensive content, Google's Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler wrote in a blog post that the company would hire "significant numbers" of employees to review YouTube videos and mark them as inappropriate for ads. He also said Google's latest advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the company review and flag large swaths of videos.
They can either honor the ethos that brought all the eyes to the videos or they can die slowly trying to suck the cock of Wall Street while losing viewers to other video channels. That whole market forces thing is a bitch.
So let me get this straight -- racists, misogynists, and terrorists are going to benefit from an ad-free experience, and yet my 6 year old daughter has to put up with ads for mortgages and makeup and other adult stuff when she wants to watch kids videos? WTF did we ever do to you Google that dirtbags get an out from Youtube ads, but the rest of us have to suffer?
Yaz
There was a time when I really enjoyed browsing youtube videos. And I didn't really mind a little advertisement break here and there.
But what killed youtube for me - was the now forced (unskippable) ads that often last well into 30 seconds or more, just for checking out a video. I like seeing if I want to watch this or not, now there's a forced ad on every second video I decide to check.
Now, before my dear Slashdotters say "well, you can use adblocker" etc, please keep in mind that a lot of us watch youtube on our "smart-tv" devices, Nintendos, Xbox's Youtube app etc.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
These companies have been putting so much effort into detecting "hate speech," but the number of times that my wife has had to hit the home button on the Roku to stop a horror movie trailer or something equally inappropriate on content appropriate for preschoolers is truly appalling. But we're not triggered, we just deal with it so we don't count.
Wow, look at HSBC withe their moral superiority. The same bank that launders money for drug lords and the Russian mafia.
Have gnu, will travel.
We are under a constant assault by a Snowflake jihad whose understanding of freedom of speech is limited to what they agree with. In America this is probably the darkest time in over 200 years with regards to the Bill of Rights. We are living in an age of the self-righteous perpetually offended punk, a punk without a hint of self-understanding or irony.
I don't understand why a potential advertiser would not want to promote their product in front of any audience.
It's not that the advertisers care who watches their adverts; the more the merrier no doubt. The issue here is that the producers of unsavoury content are being supported by income provided by the advertisers.
You were going to say that no matter whether it was relevant of not (which it isn't)
It's absolutely relevant if it's true. Youtube is being very cagey about exactly what videos it means here. The meaning of words like "derogatory" vary SIGNIFICANTLY depending on who you're asking.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Given Europe's attitude towards hate speech and how they enforce "right to be forgotten", I'm surprised that they haven't already erected a GFW at this point
...said the main living in the glorious country where the simple apparition of a nipple is considered a major mediatic catastrophe, where breast feeding is a public offense, and where anything remotely sexual is sure to traumatise the next few generations of youth. (and where nude bodies are probably terrorism-level material).
To each country and culture its own taboos.
For Germany, it might be hate speech, for France it might be "right to be forgotten", and for the USA it's anything which isn't missionary position with the sole purpose to procreate.
Beware of the nude-nipple-terrorists, America !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]